Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1887-05-07

savoyard, in Courier-Journol.

I" In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,
But, being seasoned with IA gracious voice,
Obscurps the show of evil In religion,
What damned error, but some sober brow
Wi bless 1t and approved IL with teXl,
Hiding the grossneSS with 1air ornament?
There Is no vice 20 simple, but assumes
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts"
Merchant Of Venice
And so it is with the high-tariff
dogma. Under the guise of "protec-
ton" it has afforded the means of
robbing one class for the benefit of
another for many long years. 1t ap-
peals to the ignorant and the coward
ly, and calls on them, not in vain, to
assist in destroying all foreign mar
kets and restricting trade for the sur
plus of our country to the people who
are already supplied at ruinous
prices.
Pennsylvania Just now is held up
to the people of the South as a model
State, and we hear on all sides the
word passed along the line that as
protection has made Pennsylvania
rich we must keep it up until Ala
bama, Tennessee the Virginias and
Kentucky become rich. These States
are to join Pennsylvania in robbing
the purely agricultural States. 1t is
a game of grab that Southern COM
munities are asked to practice and be-
come rich by despoiling others.
In Mississippi are found the finest
agricultural lands in the American
Union. 1t requires capital, energy
and industry to develop those lands
and cause them to laugh with the fat
ness of the harvest. Nobody in Mis-
sissippi asks Congress to grant him a
subsidy for that purpose, and if he
did he would meet with fiat refusal
Nobody in Mississippi loses any SLEEP
because of a set of paupers somewhere
on the other side of the Atlantic
ocean, and so Mississippi hoes hel
own row, tills her soil and gets along
as best she can after paying tariff
bounties to more favored sections
but just across the border in Alabama
a hill of iron ore is discovered cont
guous to another hill of stone coal
with a hill of limestone near by, ant
all at once the people of that regior
rend their garments and cover them
selve with ashes and cry aloud will
lamentations that Danish comfort
believing forth prisons, praying Con
greSs to protect them from the raw
ages of a set of paupers somewher,
who are fixed in the resolve to de
stroy the United States of Americt
by selling to our people cheap irol
and other things our farmers want tt
buy.
Actually | have met stalwart mel
outside the lumatic asylum, outsid,
the eleemosynary institutions for tn,
feeble-minded, and strange as tn,
statement may seem, inside of Con
gress, and inside of newspaper edit0
rial rooms, who gravely contend anC
seriously believe that it would be tn,
eternal ruination of this country if tn,
paupers of Europe loaded fleet afte
fleet with such goods and merchan
disc as our farmers buy every day a
the country store, and bring then
across the Atlantic and make on
farmers a gracious gift of them.
That is the very gospel of protec
ton. Everything is heresy that pre-
vents, or has tendency to check, tn
} system of robbery their tariff law
have made legal. Now, as / hav
, frequently said in these papers, / an
/ no learned politician economist. Ian
no expert upon the tariff question.
: am not deeply read or wei skilled il
the matter, but i do know wha
, i have often repeated in the column